Wikipedia:Identifying and using style guides: Difference between revisions

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{{Essay|cat=Wikipedia essays and information pages about the Manual of Style‎}}

{{Nutshell|Not all style guides are created equal; Wikipedia's Manual of Style is only based on a few of them, aside from particular topical details. Use of them as sources in our articles must follow [[WP:PSTS]] policy.}}

This essay examines the use of externally published style guides, both as informative of our own internal [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style]] (MoS), and as sources cited in our articles on English usage.

The [[Style manual|style guides]] in English that have the strongest effect on general public writing (in the kinds of secondary sources Wikipedia cares about) – and which most directly inform the [[Wikipedia:Consensus|consensus]] behind our own [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style]] (MoS) – are those for mainstream book publishing. Those of journalism also influence less formal usage (e.g. news reporting, marketing, and business style), but very little from them directly affects Wikipedia style, because it's a markedly different kind of writing. Most discipline-specific academic style manuals are focused on citation formats and the preparation of papers for publication in [[Academic journals|journals]]; we draw on them only for technical material. Government and legal manuals have little impact outside their fields; like academic manuals, they provide little to Wikipedia aside from some terminology and citation formattig.

The [[Style manual|style guides]] in English that have the strongest effect on general public writing (in the kinds of secondary sources Wikipedia cares about) – and which most directly inform the [[Wikipedia:Consensus|consensus]] behind our own [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style]] (MoS) – are those for mainstream book publishing. Those of journalism also influence less formal usage (e.g. news reporting, marketing, and business style), but very little from them directly affects Wikipedia style, because it's a markedly different kind of writing. Most discipline-specific academic style manuals are focused on citation formats and the preparation of papers for publication in [[Academic journals|journals]]; we draw on them only for technical material. Government and legal manuals have little impact outside their fields; like academic manuals, they provide little to Wikipedia aside from some terminology and citation formattigformatting.

{{em|As sources for use in our articles}}, care must be taken to use them within the bounds of Wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:No original research#Primary, secondary and tertiary sources|policy on primary, secondary and tertiary sources]], with particular regard to the reputability and expertise of the writer author(s), and an eye to the distinction between presenting the real-world consensus on a language matter versus advocating a subjective "rule". Most of these works are a mixture of sourcing types, but only {{em|secondary}} material from them can be used in our articles for claims that provide analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis.

== The "big four", plus one ==

The four most influential off-site style guides are also those that are the main bases of our own MoS. These are ''[[The Chicago Manual of Style]]'' (often called ''Chicago'' or ''CMoS'') and ''[[Garner's Modern English Usage]]'', for American and to some extent Canadian English; and ''[[New Hart's Rules]]'' and ''[[Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage]]'' for British English, and Commonwealth English more broadly.

These are the style guides with the most direct impact on formal written English. ''Chicago'' and ''New Hart's'' are the primary style guides of non-fiction book publishers in North American and the Commonwealth, respectively, and also have a significant impact on journals. Well-educated peopledpeople who write much often have a copy of one or the other (though not always a current edition). ''Garner's'' and ''Fowler's'' are both usage dictionaries (like ''New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors'', often packaged with ''New Hart's'' in a single volume, ''New Oxford Style Manual''), and are popular with well-read everyday people as well as professional writers/editors. Cambridge University Press puts one out too, but ''The Cambridge Guide to English Usage'' dates to 2004, is rarely cited, and wasis primarily for [[English as a second language|ESL]] learners.

Wikipedia's manualManual of styleStyle also relies heavily on ''[[Scientific Style and Format]]'' for medical, science, and other technical topics; e.g. it is where most of our advice on units of measure comes from. This is put together by a multi-disciplinary body of science writers from all over the [[anglosphere]]. It was formerly published in the UK, and leaned British for basic typographical mattermatters, but the last few editions have been published in the US by Chicago University Press, and been normalized to an extent to ''Chicago'' style on such matters, without affecting the technical advice.

For citationcitations in articles: OrganizationallyHighly reputable, organizationally published style guides from highly reputable publishers, like ''Chicago'' and ''New Hart's / Oxford'', are a mixture of [[Wikipedia:No original research#Primary, secondary and tertiary sources|primary, secondary, and tertiary sourcing]]. They are often explicit that they are offering an opinion which may conflict with other style guides and which is not based on generally accepted norms, but attempting to establish one; this is primary. In other cases, they explicitly defer to other named sources' consensus on a matter; this is secondary. When they simply aggregate and repeat what almost all style writers agree on (e.g., start a sentence with a capital letter absent some special reason not to, like a trademark that starts with a digit), then they are high-quality tertiary sources. ''Scientific Style and Format'' is mostly tertiary, and generally provides consistent advice with that of more discipline-specific manuals from professional bodies in chemistry, medicine, and other scientific fields {{crossref|printworthy=y|(see [[#Topical academic style guides|below]])}}.

== Government manuals ==

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English has no global or national language authority; there is no equivalent of the French language's [[Académie française]]. Government manuals have no authority to dictate style to non-governmental writers, including Wikipedia. We do borrow from national legal style manuals their citation formats for legal cases, but very little else.

Government style guides should always be treated as primary sources; their sole purpose is to "lay down the law", (to expressadvocating a strong opinion)stance forabout writersthe writing under their authority (e.g, that of government workers, or those submitting government paperwork).

== News stylebooks ==

Wikipedia is not written in [[news style]], as a matter of [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a newspaper|policy]]. Journalistic writing uses many conventions not appropriate for scholarly books (which is what an encyclopedia is, even if you move it online). Our MoS does derive a handful of things from journalism manuals, simply because they are not covered in academic ones; some examples include how to write about the transgendered, and which US cities are well-known enough to not need to be identified by state unless ambiguous. MoS does not follow journalistic punctuation, capitalization, or [[Headlinese|extreme brevity]] practices, and eschews [[JournalistJournalese|bombastic and unusual wording]] common in low-end journalism, sportswriting, and entertainment coverage.{{efn|name=titlepreps|One distinction between Wikipedia style and that of many news and academic publishers is the "[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles#Capital letters#5LETTER|five-letter rule]]": in titles of published works, capitalize a preposition of five letters or longer. Journalism style tends toward four or even three, while academic style most often lowercase all prepositions, even long ones like ''alongside''. It is one of the only ideas that Wikipedia's MoS has pulled from university textbook style guide, a "split the difference" approach that produces a happy medium for most readers and editors.<p>This is just one example. Another is that Wikipedia uses "[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Punctuation inside or outside|logical quotation]]", adopted from textual criticism, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and other technical writing. Most academic and news writing follows the less precise punctation conventions typical of publishers in the country of publication, but consensus has decided this is [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/FAQ|not the best approach]] for a work that relies on quotation precision.</p>}} Our encyclopedia articles' [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section|lead sections]] have little in common with journalistic "[[lede]]s". Even the [[Inverted pyramid (journalism)|inverted pyramid]] article structure of journalism is typically only found at Wikipedia in simple articles; for more complex topics, our pages are arranged more like an academic paper, with a number of subtopical sections, especially if [[Wikipedia:Summary style|summary style]] is employed.

In newswriting, the most influential manual, by both number of compliant publishers and number of news readers, is the ''[[Associated Press Stylebook]]'' (''AP''), used by the majority of the US press (though several papers, including ''The New York Times'', put out their own widely divergent style guides). The UK/Commonwealth press have no equivalent "monolithic" stylebook; each publisher makes up its own, or choses to follow one of the major papers' (''The GuardianEconomist'', ''The TimesGuardian'', ''The EconomistTimes'' of London, etc.and ''BBC News'' appear to be the most influential; they're all pretty inconsistent with each other on many points;, likebut ''NYT''converge theyon make a point of it,an asoverall aBritish brandingnews mechanismstyle). The ''UPI Stylebook'' and the house-style one for ''Reuters'' (both international newswires) diverge very little from ''AP''.

News style guides are mostly tertiary; theythe bulk of their content primarilyis takein the form of usage dictionaries built up from the experience and input of many professional news editors. They can sometimes be primary, however, when making "do/don't write it this way" advice that conflicts with other style guides even in the same field. It's just organizational opinion – a stance – in that case.

== Topical academic style guides ==

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There are specialized style guides for legal writing, business letters and memos, effective marketing, etc., but they don't have any real impact on general writing. Some of these have field-specific details drawn from them (especially in law) for MoS, but otherwise have no detectable influence on Wikipedia style. In particular, many of them are "punctuation-hostile", and like to drop hyphens, commas and other marks that don't seem absolutely necessary when professionals are communicating with other professionals in the same field, in compressed and highly [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Technical language|jargon-laden]] academic journal material.

As with other discipline-specific manuals, these are a mixture of primary though tertiary sourcing, and reliable for field-specific details, but {{em|not}} for general English-language matters. The legal ones are often tertiary, collecting mandatory formatting requirements imposed by various court systems.

=== House stylesheets ===

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There are innumerable style [[monograph]]s. Some notable examples include those of [[The Complete Plain Words|Gowers]], [[The Elements of Style|Strunk & White]], [[Grammar Girl|Fogarty]], [[The Sense of Style|Pinker]], and [[Eats, Shoots & Leaves|Truss]]. They range from overall writing advice to usage dictionaries, or some combination of these, and are of debated authority, often in conflict. The two best-accepted that take the form of usage dictionaries were already mentioned above: ''Fowler's'' (UK) and ''Garner's'' (US, though recently internationalized to an extent and actually published at Oxford). There are also many how-to guides intended for a specific genre (writing better mystery novels or TV scripts, etc.). MoS is not concerned with these, and takes [[Wikipedia:Writing better articles#Tone|a consistent writing approach]] to all subjects, [[Wikipedia:Writing about fiction|including fiction]].

Monographs (and two-author variants of the format) range from primary to tertiary sources, and must be used carefully and accordingly; by default, treat them as primary. The writing-advice volumes are almost entirely primary, while usage dictionaries are mostly tertiary but frequently peppered with patently primary opinion; little in either type is secondary. Where a work like ''Garner's'' provides sourceresearch-based analysis for a claim, it is secondary. Where it repeats the averaged advice of "language authorities", it is tertiary. Where it expresses the author's opinion, it is necessarily primary.

=== Textbooks ===

There's also a never-ending stream of over-priced undergraduate textbooks that are almost entirely rather regurgitative [[Wikipedia:No original research#Primary, secondary and tertiary sources|tertiary sources]], though a handful are fairly well-regarded, like ''[[The Bedford Handbook]]'' and ''The Penguin Handbook''. These do not set style, but collect and average it from other sources (generally on a national basis, and sort of splitting the difference between academic, news, and business writing). Such works must be used with care for several reasons. They're typically not very current, and may insist on traditionalisms that have already slipped out of conventional usage. They are derivative, not authoritative, and may simply pick an arbitrary recommendation when more authoritative sources conflict. Thus, they are rarely of use in informing internal MoS discussions,{{efn|name=titlepreps}} other than when surveyed in the aggregate (i.e., "Because ''Bedford'' says so" isn't a valid rationale). They are also typically written by educators and writers who specialize in writing for that market, not by language experts.

They are {{em|weak}} sources for use as citations in our actual articles; while our [[WP:No original research]] policy considers them {{em|reliable}} as a general class (at the university level and higher), they are not {{em|high-quality}} sources, and (being tertiary) they cannot be used for any claims that involve [[WP:AEIS|anaysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis]] – these require secondary sources. It is very easy to abuse such works to [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view|push a point of view]] about what is "correct". Textbooks below the university/collegiate level are not reliable sources; this also goes for remedial textbooks, andany books written for children, and works written for the [[Simple English (disambiguation)|simplified English]] market.

=== Grammars ===

Finally, there are {{em|grammars}} of English,{{efn|In this sense "a grammar" means a published study of grammar; a grammar book.}} which sometimes cover a few style matters, but they're [[Linguistic description|descriptive]] works – about everyday usage for learners, or in serious [[linguistics]] terminology (depending on the publication in question) – not [[Prescriptive grammar|prescriptive]] style manuals. Our MoS generally does not deal with grammatical matters, strictly speaking. Wikipedia trusts that our editors already [[Wikipedia:Competence is required|have that under their belt]].

High-quality grammars of English are, however, very good sources for use in articles on the English language. They are mostly secondary and to an extent tertiary sources, written by actual language experts. They should take precedence over individual monographs and other prescriptive matter. For example, no amount of punditry against split infinitives and sentence-terminating prepositions can evade the well-studied linguistic fact that there are features of the language; their use or condemnation is primarily a matter of [[Register (sociolinguistics)|register of use]], not of "correctness".

Basic learner materials are not reliable sources, for the same reason that secondary-school text books are not.

== Tone about tone – dictating what's "right" is wrong ==

Our articles should steer well clear of subjective pronouncements about what is "proper", "incorrect", "standard", etc. – even when some of our sources wander into that territory. Beware also claims about "American English", "British English", etc. made by style guide authors who are not linguists (e.g., ''Garner's Modern English Usage'', though quite comprehensive, is written by an attorney). Most linguists do not agree with the idea that orthography (spelling, punctuation, etc.) is a matter of dialect (nationwide or otherwise), but of publishing-industry standards – i.e., of commerce.

MoS is written to provide advice on what to {{em|do}} when writing articles here (and sometimes why), without editorializing on propriety or legitimacy. Please keep this in mind if you work on improving the Wikipedia Manual of Style.

Our articles should steer well clear of subjective pronouncements about what is "proper", "incorrect", "standard", etc. – even when some of our sources wander into that territory. Beware also claims about "American English", "British English", etc. made by style guide authors who are not linguists (e.g., ''Garner's Modern English Usage'', though quite comprehensive, is written by an attorney). Most linguists do not agree with the idea that orthography (spelling, punctuation, etc.) is a matter of dialect (nationwide or otherwise), but of publishing-industry standards – i.e., of commerce.

In a few cases, editors with a bee in their bonnet about the "legitimacy" or "wrongness" of some particular style nit-pick (especially along nationalistic lines) have been [[Wikipedia:Banning policy#Topic ban|topic-banned]] from editing about that peccadillo, or even banned from MoS-related discussion as a whole. Avoid [[Wikipedia:Disruptive editing|disruptive editing]] about style, especially [[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation#All parties reminded|personalization of style or article-titles disputes]]; [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions|discretionary sanctions]] have been authorized to deal with MoS-related disruption: [[Wikipedia:Administrators|admins]] have leeway to unilaterally issue bans and blocks.

In a few cases, editors with a bee in their bonnet about the "legitimacy" or "wrongness" of some particular style nit-pick (especially along nationalistic lines) have been [[Wikipedia:Banning policy#Topic ban|topic-banned]] from editing about that peccadillo, or even banned from MoS-related discussion as a whole., especially if their non-neutral [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion|advocacy]] starts affecting article content. Avoid [[Wikipedia:Disruptive editing|disruptive editing]] about style, especially [[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation#All parties reminded|personalization of style or article-titles disputes]];. [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions|discretionaryDiscretionary sanctions]] have been authorized to deal with MoS-related disruption: – [[Wikipedia:Administrators|admins]] have leeway to unilaterally issue banseditor andor page blocksrestrictions.

== Notes and references ==